Night People and How to Keep Them Warm
by cyrka
Summary: School is bad. Life is bad. Things are bad, and Shinji is okay with it because it's all that he's ever known. And then Kaworu comes. And then Kaworu goes. (A kind of dark college AU)
1. Chapter 1

**10:58 P.M**

The lights here are pretty. Shinji thinks to himself, for only a moment, that living isn't such a chore.

That miracle happens on nights like this one. When the crowd of people he voluntarily surrounds himself with is large enough to make him feel like he isn't totally socially inept. When there is enough life, and love, and conversation going on around him to let him pretend like he doesn't exist for a few hours. Like he's just some floating entity, or a guy stuck in a perpetual out of body experience who doesn't have to hear himself breathe, or chew, or live. It's sad. It's really fucking sad, but it works for him.

He can do parties. For one reason or another, Shinji can't do dates. Can't go out to lunch with more than four people without letting social exhaustion drive him out the bathroom window. Can't look at that cute guy at the pharmacy for more than two seconds at a time. But Shinji, when blessed by these fuzzy pink lights, and the end of a glass of some toilet-y drug store wine, can do house parties.

Shinji even kind of likes house parties.

It's not school, and it's not NERV. It's a hazy pink limbo in between and he lets himself enjoy it.

And Asuka? Asuka makes these parties her bitch . Everyone knows she's coming, and everyone waits for her. She is a holy constant in their lives, a deity in a high waisted skirt and a shade of lipstick that tells you she is going to destroy you if you let her. And you will let her. Shinji does every goddamn time she opens her mouth.

"I don't know where you find your clothes." She's touching his jacket, picking at the loose threads poking out of his right sleeve. It isn't loving, or flirty. She's actively disgusted. His jacket isn't that bad, but her cutting him down is as good almost just friendly conversation. She is capable of far worse.

"Mm." He says.

Neither of them care about the stupid jacket. Neither of them are sober enough to care. She's on her fourth glass of something embarrassingly pink, and heavily diluted with vodka. He's on his third. And chances are, it isn't going to stop there because this is kind of their thing.

They're kind of in their element. They have matching alcohol tolerances, and when they drink like this they feel like gods among mortals. The best part is that nobody expects it. When the ninth gin and tonic has everyone else on their knees, crying in a puddle of piss and stomach acid, there are Asuka and Shinji. Standing in the midst of it all. Beacons of light. The top bitch and her right hand man who hates her almost as much as she hates herself. It's toxic. It's going to kill them. It's sweet because it's all that they know.

It's quiet for one sweet moment. And then Asuka gives an irritated click of the tongue, and he knows that it's over. The vicious cycle beats on, the same tired beat it plays every night. He tells himself that he isn't tired of it tonight.

Click. Asuka is annoyed. She lets him know.

"I'll bet you think it's cute when you ignore me." She says, waking him from a sleepy trance.

He gives a tiny shrug, and sinks deeper into the beaten up sofa beneath him. It's soft, and broken, and it smells like weed. Just like most everyone here.

"I'm not ignoring you."He nibbles absently at his pointer fingernail, and she swats his hand away from his mouth with the fiery wrath of a god wearing expensive perfume. Dirty habit. He always forgets, and she is generous enough to remind him.

"Well then,what are you doing?." There's venom in her voice as she admires her own reflection through red fingernails. Shinji chuckles and thanks whoever the fuck is up there that she's too absorbed in the idea of herself to have heard that. She keeps talking without looking away.

"Sitting here feeling sorry for yourself, that's what. There's a distinct lack of shotglass in my hand, Shinji Ikari, and I think you know what that means."

He thinks real hard at this one.

"That you need to…? Go get a shot?" Good answer, he thinks. And contrary to what Asuka definitely believes, the right answer. But everything with her is a matrix. Nothing connects easily, nothing is what you think, and everything is a challenge. She looks at him like he may as well have just spat in her face.

"Do you even know what shots are for ?" Her offended grimace is almost too much for him to smile. It's almost cute until he remembers why she's freaking out on him. That stupid shot game. Every Saturday, without fail, Toji starts up that stupid drinking game and Asuka drags Shinji into it because she doesn't give an honest fuck about his liver, and she knows he won't say no to her.

"Probably something different than what you think."

"Shots are for winning." She says. Bingo. "Nobody here is doing shots to get drunk, they're doing shots to win, and they're doing it to try and walk out of here thinking that they're better than us. And they're not better than us."

He's nursing his drink in silence until she says that stuff about people not drinking to get drunk, at which point he promptly laughs into his drink, and calls bullshit.

"I'm almost positive that ninety percent of the people here would disagree with you about everything you just said."

And then she pouts for a second because she's trying to think of a way to hurt him badly enough to make him play. Likely just emotionally, but he's sure she isn't ruling out physical tactics either. It's not that Shinji doesn't like to drink with her. It's just that the circumstances are kind of shitty.

She doesn't want to spend time with him. She wants to win a stupid game in spite of Toji. And Shinji kind of wishes that they would just get it over with and screw already, but he's also kind of holding out hope that Asuka will someday magically wake up on the right side of the bed. And tell him that she's so so so sorry. And that she loves him, and this has all just been one giant joke. That she won't hurt him anymore.

And it makes him laugh at himself. She elbows him in the side, hard, for laughing at something that he won't tell her about. That fantasy that he's been holding in his back pocket for so many years is getting too stale. It makes his throat ache when he thinks about it. He doesn't really want her as much as he just wants to feel something.

"So are you coming, or what?"

Ah, his favorite question. How kind of her to let him pretend that it's his decision to make. In two minutes he'll be standing next to her with a tiny glass cup in one hand, the other hand resting dutifully on her right shoulder. She'll shrug it off. He won't try again. Fucking clockwork. They both know he's coming.

He gives her a look so exhausted that she almost feel bad for him. Almost.

"Shinji." She warns, her voice teetering on violent. " Are you coming ?"

"No." He tries, rolling his sore shoulders towards his neck until they give a satisfying pop. "Not tonight. Sorry."

 **3:05 a.m**

"Look, I don't throw up. I'm good, really. Just leave me alone. I haven't thrown up in like two years."

Shinji vomits for the first time in two years.

The next thirty seconds are an ephemeral lifetime. His knees get weak. The jelly in his head formerly known as a working brain is asking where home is. The scariest part isn't that he doesn't know where he is. The scariest part is that he doesn't care. Wouldn't ever care. Not if he was sober and splayed out nicely under sweaty sheets. Not when he falls to the cement like a sleepy child.

His head touches the pavement harder, and more passionately than he has ever touched another human in his life. The absence of the scent of blood is almost, almost a disappointment. Shinji would love an excuse not to go back to school tomorrow. Not to do anything tomorrow.

Not to do anything ever.

He laughs. It hurts so bad . Isn't that funny? Isn't it funny what life will do to get you to throw in the towel early and sleep six feet under ground for the rest of forever? Isn't it funnier that this is all entirely his own fault, and there is absolutely no one to cast the fiery cloak of blame onto?

"I never throw up." He talks in a voice that he swears to god isn't his own. Must belong to a child. The same child that fell into a cold vat of his own five hour old meal. Shinji Ikari wouldn't do this. Shinji Ikari is somewhere else right now.

"Of course you don't." Says the guy. That guy. The guy from before. The guy.

Shinji listens for just a second. Of course he didn't. That's right. He hasn't thrown up since that awful bout of food poisoning that time with Asuka in the student dining hall two years ago. His stomach unsettles, and then settles again. She laughed the whole time. When she caught it herself, he had to hold her hair.

"Of course I don't." He assures himself again. He repeats it to himself inside his head and watches the few little flecks of stars that the city lights haven't eaten 's so ugly out here and it breaks his heart.

When you're moving to the city this is never the image you paint in your head. Shinji, no matter how badly he ever hated himself, ever saw himself here. Not on the ground, first of all. Maybe watching the sky from something stupid and basic like a 19th floor balcony. He sees himself now, the him inside his head. Watching a navy purple sky pull into blackness as each and every star is bright, and ever performing. Someone in the distance is playing something very annoyingly American on a saxophone. He isn't vomiting. Vomiting isn't ever, ever, a part of the dream.

"I hate this." He says.

"I hate this." He says again, just to be clear. It feels clear. It feels clean. It feels like the most honest thing he's ever said in his entire life.

He's going to say it one more time, he's decided. Just because it feels good. He opens his eyes this time as if it'll somehow make a difference. As if to make sure he still hates this, before he throws it on out there again. Lo and behold, he's off the ground. He's staring into the street instead of absentee stars, and someone's phantom limb is keeping him alive and afloat.

"Oh yeah?" Says the guy. That's right, the guy is here. "Me too. Probably."

Shinji says nothing. Being anyplace but here would be such a blessing. Walking would grant that wish. So that's what he does. Tries to, anyhow.

"Woah woah woah. I'm all for quick recovery, but- Hey, just a second." Shinji's second attempt to wriggle out of the guy's arm is thwarted. He almost meets the ground again because his body feels suddenly too heavy too control yet too light all the same. Like he'd just fall. Like he'd float away if something wasn't holding him down.

So he lets himself be held. He grunts in irritation but what he really means is okay . They walk. Shinji still hates this.

"What was it that we were hating again?" Speak of the devil and his fucking coincidental dark magic.

Shinji holds back an acidic hiccup that burns the top of his throat.

"This." He gestures towards just about everything. "All of it. Me."

"You hate you?"

Shinji rolls his eyes so hard that it hurts and wishes again for the nine hundredth time that he wasn't dealing with this right throat burns with very used stomach acid. His eyes burn with something else. He knows exactly with what.

Don't. He tells himself.

"I don't hate you."

"That's because you don't know me." His voice cracks and for a second he cannot hear anything else but what he just said. Repeating, and distorting, and changing in his head. Stuck there until forever is over. Like a tired chorus to a song that hurts you whenever you hear it. Broken record. You don't know me. You don't know me.

"If you knew me-If…" Shinji breathes, and lets out that sour hiccup. "If you knew me, you'd wish you didn't."

Nobody says anything. Shinji is sure it's because the guy agrees with him. So why has he not made himself disappear. Why, when it seems like the easiest thing in the world to do, does this guy not disappear into the night sky the same way he mysteriously showed up? Not knowing Shinji seems like a privilege. One he'd take up if he had the chance.

And the guy laughs. God. Shinji isn't sure which one of the two of them he'd like to punch in the neck more right now.

"I do know you." He says, softly though they've no one to wake up. "And from my personal perspective, it isn't the...I dunno'...Catastrophic burden that you make it out to be."

"No you don't ."Shinji, needless to say, is not receptive of that. "You think because I puked on your shoes you know me?" And christ, that's right he puked on this guy's shoes.

"Thank you for being nice to me. You don't have to. You don't have to pretend that you're okay with doing this."

Then it hits him, and it hits him sharp and quick. What is this guy doing?

"Where are...Where are we going?"

"Home." The guy answers, and shifts Shinji upward when his knees suddenly decide that it's time for a good ol' concrete nap. He corrects himself quickly.

" Your home, I mean. You said something earlier about having to study for an exam tomorrow, right? Kind of hard to do that from a bathroom floor in a house that you don't live in. Though I've admittedly never tried."

The smart decision here is not to ask about the bathroom floor bit, because the small sober fraction of his brain knows that he doesn't want to know the answer. But he isn't out of questions just yet. It's cold tonight. The walk home is miles long. There's time for questions.

"How do you know where I live?"

His strange and shadowy counterpart laughs again. Shinji listens this time. It isn't a cruel laugh by any stretch. It's quiet, and humble and barely more than a chuckle. Hardly a laugh at all. Almost warm.

"You really don't remember, do you?" He asks, and the warmth in his voice is physically stunning. Shinji feels different after hearing it, in some way. "Not my place to remind you. A friend helped you out there. Asuka, I think. I've met her once before."

Shinji is somehow immediately sick again.

"Lucky you." The sarcasm is so thick he can taste it in his mouth. The guy laughs again, this time loud, and full of a personality that Shinji doesn't know.. It makes him feel good. To know that he can make someone laugh.

"I've had better luck than that." His arm snakes further away as Shinji's ability to walk by himself comes closer to returning.

It's sick that he kind of likes this. Being helped. Getting a kick out of attention like an incompetent child, or a crying baby, or Asuka. Shinji once read in a short story that burning to death after you freeze, right before you die, is warm and cozy. Like lying in front of a fireplace. It's killing you. You have no control over it. You like it. Something tells Shinji that when applied to burning, that isn't true.

It feels truer when applied to this.

"You know, I ought to be quite offended that you don't like me." Says the guy, and shinji's brain snaps free of it's dangerous train of thought. "We had a really nice conversation earlier."

Did we? Is his first thought. Remembering is a tough task right now. The shocker here is the fact that Shinji Ikari, no joke, apparently had a conversation with a stranger and they liked it .

"I never said I didn't like you." Shinji says.

"So you do like me?"

"No."

The guy, this guy, whoever (Shinji really should ask him his name) laughs again. The soft laugh. The first laugh. Shinji doesn't know which one he likes better. Or whether or not he likes either of them at all.

"I mean, I didn't say I did like you. I didn't say I didn't." He testifies, using his free hand to rub at his suddenly aching temples. "Don't confuse me, my head hurts."

"I'm not trying to." The other man consoles. His arm, Shinji has just now noticed, is gone and in it's rightful place. Shinji is walking like a normal person with a degree to get and an internship to make count and a liver to not destroy. It feels alright. It feels colder.

"But I like you, if it means anything."

And then there is a feeling. Just once, and for a tiny second that could have gone unnoticed. His stomach flutters beneath his cold skin. Maybe it's a disease. Maybe he swallowed a small family of moths. Maybe it's the vodka again. Maybe it's excitement, but likely not. He's counting on the moths.

"What did we talk about?" He says so suddenly that it makes him stumble over his feet. "Back there? You said we talked about something nice."

A steady hand takes his shoulder for safety reasons. Every part of his body is cold except for right there. Asuka was right about this fucking jacket. Good for nothing.

"Nothing super particular. Things. Stuff. Once you really got into the juice you gave a very interesting play by play of the first time you ate a pickle, and let me say, I am still to this second captivated."

His cheeks get all warm. Just moths.

"Oh my god you should have left me on the ground." He cradles his face in one hand and swears to himself, that once he is all sober and good and clean he is going to find Asuka and Toji and Kensuke and when he does, he will have a weapon. "Seriously, why are you still here?"

There is a quiet few beats, and it is long enough to send Shinji's stomach into a flutter again. In that time, he knows that the guy is going to give a real answer.

"You don't know it, Shinji Ikari, but you're worth the time." Pause. Don't look at him. Just the moths. "There isn't an incentive for everything. I don't do things because I have a reason, and I'm certainly not talking to you, or helping you because I want something out of it."

That's a first.

"I like you. You do stupid things to make your friends happy, and you're good to them,and you have things to say that make me think. I can see that in the span of a night. I hope you'll be able to see that some day."

Quiet.

"You're good, Shinji."

Shinji would so love to agree with that.

"I'm happy to have met you." They're stopped now, and for the first time during this walk, Shinji can see his eyes. "Even if only for a night, I'm glad to say that I knew you."

Shinji's crying now. Just a little, and only noticeable when you look at him straight on. But this guy has nothing else to look at. There is a crying man, and there are a million smelly garbage cans. Which one would you look at? It was going to happen, he knew that it was. He only wishes it wasn't know. He only wishes he wasn't so blindingly fucking drunk and he wishes that he could remember the first time that he made someone like him.

He wishes that it felt worse. Wishes that this didn't feel kind of good.

"Who are you?" Shinji asks, for once and for all. "Who the hell are you?"

 **11:31 PM, Earlier**

"His name is Kaworu Nagisa and I kinda' think he should do me."

Asuka offers this lovely fact into Shinji's ear, staring across the ping pong table and straight into an unlucky stranger. Shinji can hardly say that he's surprised. He can't even see the guy clearly from way over here, but if Asuka is lusting after him, then he must have enough boom boom bang enough to quench everyone in this room.

"You're gross, I don't wanna' know that." He hisses, harboring a small amount of jealous hurt behind his bitterness. Figuring out how he feels about Asuka pretty soon would be ideal, but isn't likely.

"You're no fun."

"I'm fun." He argues. "The game is called shots . The game isn't called 'verbal confirmation that Asuka is going to make an idiot out of herself and regret it'."

"Don't we play that game every night?" Toji is his rescuer tonight, swooping in just in time to save Shinji from losing an eye over a moment of brave honesty. Now they're both in on it. Now they can die together.

"So what are we doing ladies? Are we doing shots, or are we fucking around when we're supposed to be doing shots?" Toji asks the most Toji question possible, and swings an arm around Shinji's shoulder.

"The second. As we've been doing." Kensuke makes an appearance, snapping a photo that Shinji will kindly ask him to burn later but secretly love. "For an hour ."

"Not here you aren't." And that would be Hikari, resident virgin mary, and mother hen to all. "People live here, you know. If my house mother sees this house tomorrow, she'll-"

"Bullshit." Toji, well, calls bullshit. "This is a house full of dopey women, not a convent. Your house mother will see this mess in the morning and congratulate you for not being such a princess all the time. Lighten up."

And Hikari lightening up is the first mistake.

Within ten minutes, everyone is kind of crocked. Worst than usual. Fact of the matter is, finals are approaching at lightning speed and everyone is desperate for a chance to forget their impending doom other than Toji, who is desperate for free alcohol in general. In twenty minutes, Asuka's hair is down all of the way, Shinji is missing a shoe, and Hikari has already gone up to bed.

Shinji looks to Asuka, and wonders whether or not they're going to pull it together this time. Her skirt is hiked up too high, and she's clutching the sides of the table, white knuckled. But there is a fire behind her historically cold blue isn't because of the cinnamon whiskey, though the stench of it is lingering on her like she may have bathed in it.

"Don't look at me like that." She tears into him as Kensuke takes his turn. "We're fine. You don't feel sick yet, do you? Of course you don't. Man up."

Shinji bristles. "You know, there's something kind of demoralizing about a twenty year old women who still wears bows in her hair telling me to man up."

"And shut up, at that." She tries to nudge the glass into his hand, and in the process, nearly knocks the both of them over onto the ground. Which is kind of unlike her. She seems off it tonight. If Shinji was any kind of friend, he would cut her off soon. Can he do that? Is he even allowed to cut Asuka off from anything?

"Maybe you should sit down?" he gently suggests.

"I'm good, I'm good ." She hardly gets the last word out of her mouth without jumbling it, so he doesn't exactly trust her. "Shinji, we're the team . The dream team. You neeeed to trust me when i teIl you that we can do this! Have I ever failed you at anything? Anything at all?"

Shinji thinks.

"Yes. Multiple times."

"Shut up." She hisses, and spits just a little as she does. They both ignore it as she wipes it away. His feelings aren't hurt. He's worried about her, though he'd rather not be. Sometimes he thinks she deserves nothing more than his indifference. Sometimes he thinks there's a chance that he could be in love with her. Sometimes it's just hate.

"How much did you have before we started the game?" Tonight it's worry.

"A lady never tells." And that means a lot. More than usual.

"Asuka."

"Shinji."

He says nothing. Asuka has to impress everyone but herself. That means looking sober and bright eyed and soft and sweet while simultaneously getting shitfaced to the eighth degree. She has to be the cool girl. She has to win, and always always be the best and he will never understand it.

"Pour it." She deadpans, smacking the glass into his face. He catches it before she causes any damage. "I'm gonna' gooo...Grab something. Do not fuck this up."

"You said you'd find me a ride back tonight." He baits her, knowing full well that she isn't going to bite.

"What, you can't make it home on your own? God, do I always have to-You know what..." That's when she pulls out a black felt marker from god knows where. She takes his arm by force and he knows better than to ask what she's doing. In large, semi-readable font, she scrawls out his address. Straight across his forearm. It tickles.

"There." She gloats, like it's the smartest idea she's ever hatched. "Now if you get lost, some helpful passerby can return you home right where you belong. Lost and Found! You'll be fine. I'll be right back, I said I would!"

Except for she didn't say that. Shinji looks at the return adress on his arm and feels like an infant for what surprisingly isn't the first time in the past twenty minutes. He deflates quietly and she doesn't stay to watch him because it kind of makes her sad. Not that she'd ever tell.

"Toodles, okay?"

And he has to accept it when she walks away with her nose up in the air because toodles . Toodles is the end of everything. Apparently good friends let their drunk friends walk away unattended at crowded parties, but good friends don't dare disrespect the rules of toodles.

Do not fuck this up she will now be saying for an eternity in his mind. Like he isn't in danger of fucking up a supposedly prestigious internship at NERV by drinking himself stupid in a room full of fellow interns, but he is in danger of fucking up a game with almost no rules. Lovely.

He pours himself a tall shot of someone's dad's Hakushu, knowing that there are a million and two better things to subject himself to tonight. Toji snickers from across the table and Shinji would fire something at him if he wasn't throwing back shot number whatever-and-a-half.

"Toodles." Toji waggles his fingers, and Kensuke tallies another point on the paper for Shinji.

"What's with her?" Shinji instinctively lowers his voice and watches her prowl across the floor.

"What's ever with her?" Says Kensuke, vice president of the Anti-Asuka Langley Soryu club. "You're acting like she's ever acted normal a day in her life."

The Anti-Asuka club stalls to watch their favorite disaster interact with the world that they've shunned for the moment. The population does a very convincing job of pretending to love her. She still looks cute, even all screwed up like this. She laughs, and puts her arm around someone. She forgets about him and gives him no choice but to remember her.

"She's trying to impress some new guy. Wants to expand the inner circle so she doesn't have to look at us anymore." Kensuke speaks a truth that makes Shinji wonder why she even bothers hanging out with them.

Toji takes his turn in one heavy gulp and only coughs for a second or two when it's over.

"I'll bet you money she's only interested in helping one thing expand."

Shinji's laugh is cut off quickly by something warm flickering inside his stomach. All of him goes red. He coughs and takes the next shot without even realizing that he's doing it, and so begins another unhealthy habit.

"That's how she wants to impress people? Getting drunk? Not very Asuka of her."

"Well, what would you do? Rattle off times tables until girls wanna' drop their pants for you?" Toji thinks he's funny, and laughs at his own joke while nobody else does because he's just that kind of guy. "Really, she's got the right idea. She's gotta' dosomething to make people like her."

"And being nice is too healthy an alternative for her?" Kensuke suggests, and Shinji thinks him stupid to think for even a moment that Asuka would try something like that. She isn't most people. Being kind would probably kill her.

"Not grand enough for her. Being nice doesn't get you attention."

Being nice doesn't get you anything. Shinji, with his empty pockets and microscopic list of personal contacts would know. He watches her. And then he watches her again. His stomach hurts and he feels like a creep. He wants to go home.

She leans into someone's ear and whispers something that he can't hear. He really, really wants to go home.

Toji, who doesn't understand Shinji but is trying very hard to, is there in an instant with a full shot glass and a sorry face. He swings an arm around Shinji's shoulder and they watch Asuka quietly dismantle herself.

"The sooner you get over this…" Toji doesn't finish.

"I know." Shinji mutters beneath the noise. He knows. He's trying to.

And then she's down. It only takes seconds, and the pretty little thing that she has painted herself to be is spilled out onto the floor like a drowned ragdoll. The noise doesn't cease. The party doesn't stop. A few people look back and watch her try to collect herself, but then something else interesting happens and she is old news again.

Shinji is over there as soon as it happens because this apparently his fucking job or something.

"Don't touch-...G...Get off of me, I'm fine." Her words are soupy and mashed together in ways that they shouldn't be. He picks her up under her arms and drags her to her feet. Some other guy steadies her as she half fights them off.

"Alright, lights out." Shinji tells 's disgusted with himself. Secretly relieved that she's too out of herself to finish the night. Too out of herself to be better than him.

"I'm talking to Kaworu. Don't be rude, come on, get off me."

Hikari and her roommates live here. Up the stairs,down the longest hall, and past the fake plastic ficus there is a tiny little room that has only ever been slept in by sad drunk people who can't make it home for the night. Tomorrow, Asuka will be absolutely thrilled to know that she has made the list.

So Shinji and this other guy take her up those stairs, one of them on each arm. It's only when they're half way up that Shinji realizes he hasn't actually made the effort to see who this guy is.

"Watch the corner." That guy says.

And Shinji doesn't watch the corner because he's very much watching that guy. The guy. The famous, and relatively unlucky guy that Asuka has been after this entire night. It's dark up here, and Shinji can only make out a few details. There's a piece of party tinsel behind his ear. He's too tall, but not much taller than Shinji.

He is, in the shortest words possible, the most prominent thing that Shinji has ever seen in a dark hallway at 12:00 am.

"Corner." Is the fourth word that he ever says to Shinji. Shinji is too busy over analyzing a random encounter with a helpful guy to actually listen to what he's saying. Needless to say, he doesn't watch the corner. The corner clocks him in the back of the head, and the guy laughs in the least demeaning way that Shinji has ever heard. He rubs the spot where the corner hit.

"Yikes." Shinji says.

"Yikes Indeed." Says the guy. Kaworu, he thinks. They're standing there for an oddly warn few seconds before Shinji forgets everything about the woman in his arms and decides that he needs to start a conversation with this guy right here, and right now.

"Hi." Is all he can manage.

"Hi there." Says Kaworu. "We should probably take your friend to bed."

"Probably." Shinji agrees, now a blooming shade of red that he prays to god can't be seen in the dark. They move her into the bedroom and Shinji secretly calls himself an idiot with every step that they take. She's pretty much flightless by the time they put her to bed. They don't turn the light on. It's quiet up here.

It somehow ends up with them both at the foot of the bed, sat out on an old quilt that somebody's grandmother would be ashamed to see disrespected like this. There's a smell like violet perfume and dust in the air. It almost makes him ill. But it's nice here. You can hear the bugs, and a few cars, and somebody's old radio. The faint chatter of people downstairs. There's a sliver of buttery light in the doorway that neither of them wish to enter too badly.

"Thanks for that." Shinji bites his tongue, and stares at the smeared address on his arm. Goddamn baby.

"Ah, no problem at all." It seems like he isn't going to say anything else for a second. "I've seen you before. NERV, right?"

"Mhm." Shinji answers, at first not wondering why he's never seen this guy at NERV this guy. At first he wonders why they're still speaking. Why they're huddled together in a tiny dark room with odd smells and a drunk girl. He hopes that Asuka isn't awake.

"Internship?"

Shinji nods.

"What else do you know about me?" What first seems like a witty stab at banter melts away into awkwardness when Kaworu doesn't answer right away. He shouldn't have asked that. That was weird. That was a really, really, really weird thing to ask and Shinji is never going to make another friend as long as he lives.

But Kaworu turns to look at him, and cocks his head as if to give this some thought. His thumbnail is in his mouth as he thinks. The tinsel in his hair moves, but doesn't fall. When he finds an answer, Shinji can see it flicker through his eyes.

"Shinji is your name, I'm pretty certain." He decides. Easy one. Shinji will give him that. "You've got brown hair. Kinda' tall. Cute face. You're majoring in Law and Justice."

Shinji and his innocent soul are all caught up in being surprised that Kaworu could guess about the Law and Justice thing before cute face rings around in his brain about thirteen times. Cute face. He almost chokes on his own spit.

"How'd you, um…" Choke. "How'd you know about me majoring in Law and Justice?

Kaworu extends a finger, and Shinji is prepared for nothing. He pokes it into Shinji's chest and Shinji stares at it for a whole minute, wondering whether or not this is some absurd sexual gesture that he hasn't heard of. Shinji is almost ready to do it too when Kaworu clarifies this mess.

"Your shirt." He says, and Shinji looks down. T3U Law and Justice. Beneath the words, there is a little student drawn picture of their school mascot donning a police uniform and a very menacing pair of handcuffs. They never hear the end of it for thatstylistic choice, but hey, the shirts were already printed.

"Oh." Shinji then thinks of thirty other responses that are more colorful than "oh."

"Lucky guess." Kaworu takes his finger away, and uses it to gesture towards the slumbering mess of legs and blankets. "She yours?"

"Yeah."

Kaworu nods. Shinji feels the overwhelming urge to correct himself for some reason.

"I mean, no. We're not….together or anything. If anything, I thought she was yours."

And then Kaworu snorts kind of cruely into the dark, like that was either the funniest or most disgusting thing he's heard tonight. There's a sense of relief that comes with finding out that the two of them aren't connected in any way.

"Not likely." Kaworu says suddenly. "I'm kind of pretty gay."

And in that wide open moment Shinji feels so comfortable replying me too.

He doesn't say it, of course. Because deciding on a sexuality finally is too handsome a luxury for him to afford. He watches Kaworu, who is not only scary and kind of beautiful, but now gay, and now twenty thousand leagues above Shinji who might as well be rusting on the ocean floor. He is strange and now he is wise. Shinji is jealous and also he is something else. He doesn't know what.

He has to look away now.

"Good." Shinji swallows hard and finds himself with a headache. "I mean, because...She's definitely into you, and…" Shit. Was that public information? "...Uh. If you were straight you'd probably be into her, and she's...She's…"

Asuka mutters a mushy string of words into a decorative pillow and Shinji's heartbeat speeds up to a pace that most professionals would panic about. He pokes her bare leg and doesn't lose a finger, which means she's beyond passed out. He breathes easy for a few seconds. They watch her slip further into dreams.

"Difficult?" Kaworu guesses.

And from the safety of his head, Shinji is screaming yes . Yes, jesus christ yes.

"...Kind of."

For a long few seconds they're still watching her, Shinji praying silently for Asuka to never find out that he let her lay passed out drunk in some crummy old bed while he shit talked her with a guy she wanted to bang. And to Shinji, that sounds like a goddamn dream. He loves her, sometimes. Sometimes he wants to see her hurt.

"Are you into her?"

Shinji turns his head and opens his mouth to start up the denial train and finds that Kaworu is looking straight at him. Suddenly he knows that Kaworu was never watching Asuka with him. Not at all.

"Sometimes." This is the right answer, but the honesty doesn't feel clean and weightless in his chest. It feels wrong. Dirty.

Kaworu nods, and it is so hopelessly impossible to read. Not that Shinji can read people, but there are no telltale signs of any emotion. Disgust brings a slightly narrowed eyebrow, and an unentertained scoff. Disappointment is a tight smile that you don't really mean. Not caring looks like not caring.

Kaworu just nods.

"That's alright." He says. Like he knows that this is a festering wound that needs to be treated with kind phrases. And the thing is, it almost works for a second.

But not totally. Shinji lets the silence settle over again because he is very sure that he has done something to bring this conversation to an end. Only he can't leave. He's clutching the old quilt with dirty fingernails and chewing the tip of his tongue raw. Some kind of anticipation is murdering him. Only he doesn't know what kind. But he isn't uncomfortable.

"Can I ask you another question?" Kaworu keeps talking but Shinji already knows his answer. "Please don't feel obligated to say yes."

Shinji waits three seconds so not to seem desperate.

"Yes." He says desperately.

"Do you like her right now?" Kaworu asks.

Shinji thinks about it.

Then he watches the door. The light that it lets in. He watches that light wash the wall behind this strange man in yellow warmth. Like an aura. Shinji doesn't believe in shit like that. But he believes that it is good in here. He believes that he kind of feels something. Believes that it is warm in here, both physically and in bizarre ways that he hasn't known often before. Believes that the night will be long. Believes that he sort of wants it to.

And then he thinks of Asuka for a split second and physically feels the color red. He knows his answer.

"No."

Stranger smiles, barely even at all. Shinji tries it and it kind of feels good. He doesn't know what this is. He has absolutely no idea what is going to happen. He isn't worried about it. This is not the end.

"Do you wanna go downstairs now?" Kaworu asks suddenly, but somehow there is no suddenness in it at all.

Shinji swallows air.

"With you?"

Kaworu is smiling, kind of still. He's touching Shinji. Has been for a long time. His hands aren't flirty or intrusive or threatening on Shinji's arm. They're just there. They're existing there for a reason that the alcohol in his blood wants to call fate. Shinji is smarter. He knows not to call it anything.

"If you want." He replies. "I think we'd be really good at walking downstairs together."

Shinji nods. They don't go yet. They will when they want to because they don't need to just yet. It's warm here. It's pretty here.


	2. Chapter 2

**1:09 PM**

"I think he's alive." Seconds happen. Breathing. A long drag from a short cigarette. The birds have been awake for hours now. "Should I hope he is? I don't even know anymore."

It's a phone speaker is quiet as the person on the other end of the line decides whether or not to respond to that. She smells like beer and talks like a high schooler. Shinji knows who she is before he knows who he is.

"...Am I fucked up for saying that?" He tells her no, but only in his head. She doesn't hear him. She isn't good at reading his thoughts anymore. He doesn't cry in her lap anymore. He's here less often. He's miles away when they're in the same room. He is so, so, so much like her. That's what she hates about him.

"Am I so totally fucked up for even thinking something like that?"

There's a suspiciously vomit-like stench surrounding the area, and it tells him that if she is subconsciously wishing him dead right now, there is a very good reason. Underneath this swath of sweaty blankets, Shinji himself is half waiting to die. This is the script that bad hangovers tend to follow. You have no idea where you are. Everything smells like dead cats. The pulsating in your head: concussion or just a bad headache? Did you fall last night? No, bad question. How many times did you fall last night?

What have you done? Who hates you this time? What, in gods name, have you done?

"So this kid brings him home last night…" Hark, an answer.

"And I'm in the bathtub...What? Yes I was fucking naked, what do you bathe in, an evening gown? So I hear this knock at the door, and I'm like okay, that's weird, Shinji has a key. So the knocking gets louder, and I go out there, soaking wet, this stupid kitchen knife in my hand while I'm somehow still managing to hold up my freaking towel, and...What? Of course not."

And shinji, from beyond his grave of gin and puke, is wishing for the first time since he's known Misato, that she'd finish her goddamn story. But she digresses like she's so good at, and spins off into a secondary tale about skin care or something. He isn't listening anymore.

"It's a nice bathrobe, I'm telling you, hot soapy water and silk are not friends with each other."

But he has to stay dead, is the thing. When, and if he lets her know he's not sleeping anymore, she is probably going to smack him into the sun, if she doesn't just kill him first. Worse than that, she's going to want to talk . A "talk" isn't really the right work for it. He'd rather call it a yell.

"Have I what? Well. I mean...yeah, I checked on him around noon just to make sure he was still breathing, but an hour is plenty of time to die…"

And now, having just been delivered the knowledge that it's one o'clock, he very much wishes that he had accidentally filled his lungs with stomach acid passed quietly. That Indian Civilization exam he had at eight this morning? Yeah, worth about forty percent of his like the last test was. Forty percent. The one that he missed because.

Because why? Because he wanted to?

Shinji throws up a little bit in his mouth for more than one reason, curls up into his own putrid scent, and considers thinking of Asuka for a wouldn't be a good idea, he thinks, as he thinks of the way she's going to look at him later. She won't smell like puke, but the taste will be burnt into her throat for days. Shinji knows about her. There are scars on her knees from shambling home at night. From rugby, she says. Says she was an open side flanker back in her day. Back in her day. Like she's old and wise or something. God.

He swallows and it hurts. It will hurt for a long time.

And then there's this softness on his face. He doesn't entirely realize at first that they're fingers. Or even that his covers, tacky with dried sweat and dried spew, are long gone. His ears are cold now. His sinuses are on fire. The light is sneaking underneath his closed eyes, and into his skin, burning him down into his blood that he swears to god is boiling him alive. It stinks so fucking bad in here. This is so, so, so bad.

And her fingers are cold and she smells warm. Like cinnamon, and smoke, and dark coffee, and stale breath, and the costly shampoo that she locks away from one made with real passion flower, but artificial blood orange. When she catches the scent of it on his shoulders she all but shoots him in the head. She smells like the mother she will never become.

Her fingernail, the overly grown out one that she won't cut, traces down his cheek for just a second. Then she's feeling his forehead again, not knowing exactly what it is that she's doing, but feeling confident because women do this on TV all the time. She doesn't know what to feel for so she just keeps her hand there. He can almost see her trying to be ashamed in him. She breathes in.

"He thinks I don't know he's awake." She says. She's going to have to call you back, she says.

Shinji listens to her cell phone plop into his covers. She offers him a few seconds more of peace while she's deciding what to do with him.

"You're such a bad liar." She says, her voice tired and sort of sweet. "Even when you're not even doing anything you are such a bad liar."

Retreat, he thinks. Back down into the covers he burrows, slamming a stray pillow over his aching head in hopes that maybe just maybe, it will save him from her sense of responsibility. She snatches the pillow in one graceful swoop and contemplates beating some sense into him. For now, and now only, she is a pacifist. He gives her a gravely groan, and in response, she strips him of his shell of covers.

"Out." He tries to scold her out, and she just laughs because there's more danger behind the gates of a preschool than there is inside the gates of Shinji Ikari. She nudges him with her foot.

"Get up. Now. You can still make it to...pre-intro-to-econ 101, or whatever the hell." She's taking another drag and spilling ashes onto his sheets.

"Not worth it." He opens his eyes just a little bit and suffers the horrible brightness of a single lamp that just last week he said wasn't bright enough. He only thanks god that he hasn't replaced it yet. He looks to Misato, who seems a lot more pissed off now that he can actually see her.

"Tough. Move it. Maybe I'll drive you."

"You're not my mom."

And that was a mistake on his part. He doesn't know why. The gap of silence that follows is small, but in it she is about to say something. He watches her lips start to move, and her unmade eyebrows start to meet in confusion or anger or maybe hurt. They grow a part a little.

"You'd better be glad I'm not your mom." She finds her words. "If I was your mother, you would have been out the door at six o'clock. And you'd be limping. This would have been grounds for a whooping."

He kicks at her knee, very much not here for the whole invasion of personal space thing. She doesn't budge.

"That isn't how parenting works." He kicks again. She grabs his ankle and he isn't shocked by how strong she is. She attended the police academy once upon a long time ago. He wonders if she's ever gotten to use her strength for anything other than threatening him into going to class.

"Now." She repeats. The sugar in her voice is melting away at a dangerous pace.

"No." He mutters. "Don't feel good."

And that pisses her off too, if that ugly scoff she just fired off was any indication. She lets his foot go, and punishes him with the window. Any other morning, the term punishment by window wouldn't mean anything. But the thing about sunlight and hungover people is that they kind of don't work together. She zips the curtains wide open and he recoils in protest.

"Hey, you think every time I get blasted the night before work I use it as an excuse to stay home and sleep all day?" She doesn't give him the time to answer. "No. Because I'm a grown up. Because people depend on me."

Totally serious, she says that. Standing here in smudged eyeliner and a kitty-cat bathrobe circa-1998 tanktop, bra who the hell knows where, Misato claims to be a responsible adult. This isn't an argument for today.

"Nobody depends on me." He says, unable to keep his anti-edgy-teenager filter off for the moment. Too early for that.

That seems to soften her up a little, or so he is hoping from his nest of stink and warmth. She looks at him with her mouth turned a little bit downward. Sorry eyes. He used to hate it when she felt sorry for him. Now it just kind of happens, and there isn't anything to do about it, so he struggles to even care anymore. She makes a sad sound. It sort of hurts him a little bit, but time will take that away from him.

"Sweetie." She says. She didn't have anything else planned to console him with, he can tell. It was just sweetie. Anything else is a lie. "If you want people to depend on you, you have to meet them first. You can't meet people in bed."

Well, someone obviously hasn't heard of the internet. He was going to say that outloud. But it wasn't negative enough. He's thinking of something to say while she comes back over to the bed and finds a relatively clean place to sit. She touches his back and he flinches. Not his mother. Not her son.

"I know you're in a funk." Funk is a funny way to put it, he thinks. "I know that. I'm not going to try to force you out of it. I'm not gonna' try to tell you what to do. But…"

There's always a but. There is always, in every safe corner and warm nook, a loophole. Nothing is ever over or free. There is always a catch, and everything has to be difficult. No exceptions. He burrows deeper into the dark.

He doesn't even have to tell her to screw off. Her hand is on his back again. He shakes it off, pushing away her warmth for the last time, not knowing how close she is to giving up on him. Every second she knows him a little less.

He doesn't see her teeth curling into her bottom lip with such an intensity that it summons blood to her tongue. It wouldn't do shit if she did. And she's already decided, anyway. She is officially beyond the realms of pissed off.

"Y'know, Shinji, I really hope you're grateful that I'm as forgiving as I am." Misato, in the simplest terms, snaps. "Do you think...Do you think that if Ritsuko saw you choosing to sloth around in your own vomit instead of pursuing your education she'd let you keep your internship? Do you think she'd even think twice about finding another kid to pop into your place?"

She's yelling now, though she'd easily deny it, and the sun is miraculously here for the first time in weeks at the worst possible time, and the birds are fucking screaming. He wants this to be done. He decides to give her the goddamn dialogue that she wants. Press A to fight back. Press B to give in and shut up.

"No." He says, with the actual enthusiasm of the color grey.

"Then why shouldn't I?" She asks. "Why am I any different? Why should I just let you sit here and be a sad little boy when none of my colleagues would do the same?"

Breathe. "I don't know."

Actual bullshit. They both know it. They both know that this situation, their particular situation, is different. Do they know why? No. A reason would be nice, but this is just the way this is, and maybe pretending to hate it makes them feel a little bit more comfortable with it, but nothing is going to change. She isn't going to kick him out. He isn't going to leave.

They don't know why it works this way. It just does.

So really, in the end, she hasn't a thing in the world to say to him, which is why she's standing there in silence, honoring the wish of every half-ex boyfriend who's ever dared to tell her to shut her goddamn mouth. Shinji makes her quiet in a way that most men will never achieve.

No, she's thinking. Not a man. Not a boy either, but not a man. Something.

"I don't even scare you anymore." She admits. To herself. His attention is a quiet plus side.

When he rolls over, she is reminded that he's alive. That isn't the scary part. The scary part is that it shocks her. His face is shadows and unwanted whiskers and so many other things. She wishes he'd turn over. She wishes, sort of, that he'd go back to sleep.

"You always scare me." He says.

"And you always were a bad liar."

Sometime in the next quiet minute she begins to give up on him. He won't look at her. Tells himself that soon, in a second he's going to get up and slam the door and be the boy in the book who never comes home, who never calls again, and who everybody misses. He will make her sorry in the gentlest of ways.

Not two seconds go by. She gets up to leave. All of the sudden he has never felt so sorry in his life. He doesn't know what for. For being here, and smelling bad, and making her say nice things when she probably doesn't want to. For taking this room in her house when she could be renting it out and giving her jack-shit in return. For that one time. And the time after that. That other time, too.

"Misato." Shinji calls out. Voice like dust. She doesn't pick up. He almost doesn't try again. "Misato? Are you still there?"

Of course, she doesn't say. She has responsibilities here, that she didn't ask for, that she never fucking asked for, but she will try to keep up with them until she can't anymore. And then she will try harder. She will wait for the storm to pass, but unlike most people, will stay outside and fuck with the storm until it goes away. Maybe then she'll go outside. Maybe then the sweet old lady at the grocery store will stop asking her about the bags under her eyes.

"I'm here, sweetheart." He hates that.

"What would you do right now?" He asks, subconsciously promising himself that this will really, honestly, seriously be the last time he asks for life advice from a grown woman who just finished washing her hello kitty underwear in the kitchen sink. "What would you do right now if you were me?"

Probably her favorite question in the world. In the universe, maybe, with the exception of "My god, are those real?" which he has never asked her, though she says people do it all the time. But when she turns around, she is one thousand years younger. Misato Katsuragi has opinions spilling out of every orifice of her body. She is bright again. She is spry. An entire life management team, tied into a killer body and a pair of baby pink slippers.

" Okay. Hear me out." Just four words. The four horsemen of the verbal apocalypse. He hears her out. She nests into the clean corner of his bed one last time, legs tucked under and hands folded tightly like the good girl she doesn't even try to be.

"You know me. I don't wanna' tell you how to live your life. I don't like to meddle." He choke-scoff's and she swats him for it. "But I am gonna' tell you, hypothetically, what I would do if I were you. Hypothetically."

"Hypothetically?" He teases her. Swat number two is dutifully endured.

" Hypothetically. Ass. Hear me out."

So he hears her out, again .

"I would get up and shower. Put my bedding in the wash and ask Misato really really nicely if she'd put them in the dryer for me later." He takes a sniff, dies a little, and feels kind of bad that she had to advise him to shower.

"And then…" She continues, letting her voice grow just the tiniest bit more gentle. "I'd get myself a coffee at the convenience store. And I'd hurry up and make it to my 2:30 class to make this day at least a little useful...That's what I'd do."

She takes a puff from a newborn cigarette that Shinji can't remember her lighting (where did she get a lighter?), and a fresh coil of white smoke is born into the air, only to die in the only slice of sunlight in the house. She has made her peace.

"That's what I'd do if I were you." She says. And how unfortunate it is that she isn't. How beautiful would it be to be someone else. Even someone just like you. Even if just for a day.

He offers her an understanding nod, a small one that doesn't require much neck work. He hopes that it's enough for her because he really, really doesn't know what to say right now. Get out of bed? Go outside? Spend actual, real life money? What do you say to such convoluted and achievable advice like this? Okay, that's what I'll do?"

"Okay." He tells her. "That's what I'll do."

She'd smile at him, if it wasn't beyond her at this point. When he said okay, that was when she didn't need to be the styrofoam, pseudo-mom anymore. She's the cool girl again. She smokes cigarettes at the foot of your bed and tells you what to do. She will never tell you which side of her is real. You will never ask.

"Okay." Ash falls from her hand. She doesn't watch it drop. "Then that's what you'll do."

So that it is. And so that it will be. He hopes that she'll make herself scarce before he tries to get out of bed, purely because he's almost positive that he isn't wearing pants, but considering the amount of times she's accidentally seen his penis, Shinji is sure she isn't conflicted about sticking around. He's about to ask her to leave when he notices that look on her face. That look. A thinking look. She's in the middle of a thought. Her reign of care and terror has yet to die.

"And I would call that boy." She adds. He wasn't all the way awake before that. "And I would apologize to him."

An d that. That is when he gets up. In under two seconds he is up, able bodied, and feeling the fear of god in thirty one million ways, all beginning and ending with "call that boy". Fear, though not typically used in medicinal practices, is a hell of a drug. When you are afraid, you are nothing else. When you remember the boy, the hangover is gone. The boy.

Shinji opens his dry mouth and knows, knows, knows that he shouldn't even ask. He pulls his phone from the crack between his bed and his nightstand, where he knows without fail, it will always be when he wakes up hungover. He almost doesn't even turn it on. And yet, what else is there to ruin? What, in god's name, has he got left to lose?

"What boy?" He asks. His last words before the storm. He thumbs the on button.

Twenty three missed calls. Thirty four new texts. Only about five of them aren't from Asuka. Those five are the only ones that don't start with " fuck you fuck you fuck you ".

 **12:34 AM, Last Night**

Two minutes after midnight, it rained. And it rained, and it rained, and it rained. The word around the ping pong table was that nobody was getting home. The roads were oily slick because it hadn't rained in awhile, and there was hearsay that drunk driving on a road that was pretty much the larger equivalent of the underside of a banana peel was probably dangerous. From cracked open windows, you could smell the trees sweating, and the dirt rising up, and a little bit of oil, and mostly just earth. Kaworu said there was a name for that. Petrichor. He was the first one to go outside.

It took seven other people, and the sweet spitty end of a wine cooler to force Shinji outside. But before that, he watched from the propped open window. He watched them, without shoes and coats, get destroyed by rain and mud and scent and decided that twenty something is the closest you can get to being a kid without surrendering the right to drink and legally buy good porn. He watched them be drunk, and old, and completely fucking broke, and he watched them forget that they were.

He watched Kaworu, who had lost the tinsel behind his ear. Forming a closed daisy chain with two or three other people that he probably didn't know, spinning like an idiot, like there weren't at least seven people in this neighborhood looking for an excuse to call the police on some drunken college kids. When they fell, nobody noticed. They kept talking. Kept being the cool kids. They were a movie, and he felt guilt in knowing that he could watch forever.

And then Kaworu was gone from the circle, and when Shinji tried to look for him, the front door opened behind him. Everyone's outside, Kaworu told him. His hair was this wet shade of honey white and Shinji was drunk enough to ask him whether or not it was natural instead of saying hello. He laughed. Didn't answer. He was soaked in a way that would bother him for hours and hours if he was the kind of person to let it. Shinji would come to know that he wasn't. Come out, he said, or something like it. That was how Shinii became the last person out of the house.

Kaworu was there, in the mess of rain and warm bodies and dirt, but only in small pieces of time. Lost, for the most part. They saw each other in glances, and when people asked Shinji who he was looking for, he didn't know that he was lying when he said no. When Toji kind of materialized out of nowhere and almost broke Shinji's neck with a tackling hug, he abandoned his search in the name of lightening the fuck up.

And he did. He is. He would like to think so, anyway. He looks up from his spot under the old maple, counts exactly two stars, and is okay with the lack of romanticism in the sky tonight. He's here with Toji, who he isn't exactly trying to woo, anyway.

"You know, you've been really un-Shinji tonight." Says his friend, who is being an acquired taste at the moment. Shinji blows an offended raspberry, but isn't really that offended.

"I'll bet you think that wasn't a backhanded compliment." He says. Toji elbows him in a way that comes off as friendly, something Asuka hasn't mastered yet, and probably won't try to.

"I'm serious." Toji searches his pockets idly.

"I'll bet you are."

"Shut up." He says, pulling out a self-rolled cigarette. Shinji didn't even know he smoked. People change with the seasons, he supposes. "I'm trying to be nice. I just wanted to let you know I've noticed, that's all." Shinji nods.

"I don't think I've ever been complicated for being tolerable before." Shinji sort of winces when Toji laughs, because his laugh is ugly, but in an endearing way. His girlfriends probably think it's cute, until they're on the other end of it.

"Get used to it, pal." Toji mumbles through the butt of his cigarette, having a difficult time with the lighter in this wind. "Nobody's ever good anymore. People are assholes, or they're tolerable. If you happen to find another category, gimme her number."

Shinji scoffs, because that isn't even the most negative thing he's heard Toji say tonight. Or in the past ten minutes. He's another question mark in Shinji's weird life. They're friends, and this he hopes will never change, but he sure as hell would like to know why. Not that it matters. He's fine with this. He's fine with maple trees, and backhanded compliments, and a lack of stars that ceased to be disappointing a long time ago.

"What's on your mind, sport?" Toji channels the late Jay Gatsby, thinking he's cool enough to do so.

"Not much." Shinji lies, stops, and reconsiders. "Since when do you smoke?"

"I don't smoke." Toji, the smartest and brightest jewel in the box, continues to smoke. Shinji, mulling over a response, is so very close to begging for clarification when Toji passes the loosely rolled cigarette that Toji definitely isn't smoking over his way. "And neither do you. But it's been a tough week. Been a good night."

Good night. Something bright rolls through the sky. Shinji hears someone nearby call it a shooting knows that it isn't. No one will mention that it's just a small jet, and everyone will call it a shooting star. When there isn't much to like about people, Shinji likes that about them. He thinks of Kaworu again. He's free for another thirty seconds before the thought comes back.

"Did you know that guy?" Shinji asks. "The one that helped me put Asuka to bed? Do you know anything about him?"

Toji stretches a little bit, and yawns at the mention of being put to bed.

"What, the dude Asuka was being thirsty about?" Shinji,though he himself isn't wild about that description, nods in approval. "No. Her yammering was the first I've heard of him. New, I guess. Weird. Wonder who he's friends with to end up around here. Why? You wanna' beat him up?"

The thing is, Shinji has so little experience in actually dealing with his erratic pop-up ad emotions,could very well want to beat this guy up. He doesn't know. He's interested. The reason is yet to be discovered.

But he looks at Toji, who wouldn't understand. Toji who would try to understand, but likely just end up asleep or ready for a subject change by the time the conversation got deeper than boobs and buffalo wings. Shinji sighs a little.

"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, I wanna' beat him up."

At fifty minutes past midnight, it rains again. Hard. It's unforgiving this time. What were once delicate, and even cute little droplets, are now big, and thick, and coming down in little slaps that sting the side of your face when you look up at them. People are flooding inside within minutes of the downpour, and this time Shinji is the first of the movement.

He doesn't love being alone, but he doesn't hate it. It's just that nobody really knows that the basement laundry room exists, so there's a distinct lack of stink and noise there. As well as that, Shinji has never been the kind of guy to sit around in a wet shirt and be cool with it. Not when there are things like dryers, and warm rooms that god didn't create to just sit around and go to waste. So he doesn't feel bad being down here, shirtless in a warm room, alone and unattended. It's nice. Not weird.

Shinji shuts the dryer, and presses a random smattering of buttons and knobs that he thinks won't ruin his shirt, or blow up the house or something. All there is to do now is wait. All there was to do was wait, but now the stairs are creaking, and that means that someone is walking down here, and that means that his hiding spot is kaputz, and that means that it's time for friendly conversation. He rests against the dryer and rubs his head, just now thinking that maybe drinking that much wasn't a great plan.

"Oh, sorry." The creaking stops. Kaworu is here. "I just got sent down for ice, I didn't mean to-"

"No, no. It's- You're good." Shinji stutters. Kaworu is here. Kaworu is here, and he just walked in on Shinji being shirtless and alone in the basement with absolutely no clear explanation in sight. So now he thinks that Shinji is some weird guy who walks around shirtless in people's empty basements. Awesome. Definitely the most desirable outcome of the night.

"I was just...Uh. I was…"

"...Drying your shirt?" Kaworu puts two and two together because it really wasn't that hard in the first place. Dryer. Wet clothes. Come on, Shinji.

"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, drying my shirt. Sorry, I just...Don't do well after mixed drinks."

"Hey, that's fine." Kaworu closes the distance a little bit, and Shinji wonders whether or not they're going to talk again. Like they did upstairs. "No harm in that. Quite the weather out there."

"Yeah." Shinji says, frantically checking the inside of the dryer to see if his shirt is decently wearable yet. Still wet. Shit. He would very much love to have this conversation clothed. "It's...Pretty weathery out there."

That's the end of that conversation. Shinji can safely say he's never been as inept at social interaction as he has been for the past minute. The worst part is that Kaworu hasn't fucked off yet, and the worst worst part is that Shinji doesn't want him to. He had imagined later conversations with Kaworu earlier, after they'd came downstairs. And in those conversations he was clothed, and witty, and always had something interesting to say. He was definitely wearing a shirt. You know you're a piece of work when you fantasize about having normal, successful conversations.

"Hey, do you know anything about an ice chest down here?" Kaworu asks, remembering his mission. It's now that Shinji catches the fact that he's still wet, hair pushed back to keep it from dripping in his face. Probably the last one inside. Goddamn free spirits.

"Uh, yeah." He points off to a janky little ice bin near the garage door. "Right over there. There's a lock on the bottom, so you gotta' undo it first."

"Gotcha." He steps off to complete his task, having none of the trouble with that stupid rusty lock that Shinji has every single time he uses it. He retrieves the ice. He will be gone in a few seconds, and Shirtless McLonely will be solemn again.

"Doesn't that bother you?" Shinji asks, almost unaware that he'd even opened his mouth to speak in the first place. Kaworu is still mostly inside the chest, rooting around as if ice is hard to look for in a freezer.

"Doesn't what bother me?" His sound is muffled by five dollar pizza and freezer burnt popsickles. Shinji feels like he should roll his eyes. And yet. Yet he gives a sort of laughy scoff that only comes off as mildly impatient. Progress.

"Being soaked. Walking around soaked. Not doing anything about it. You're not cold?"

Kaworu, useless kaworu, emerges from the freezer chest with a very artificially red Popsicle, and no ice to show for his small struggle. He unwraps it and sticks the cellophane wrapper into his pocket. He eats it. He shows no remorse for his failed task. Only then does he offer a shrug. When Shinji watches him exist he feels somehow microscopic.

"Oh I'm pretty cold." He says. "It just doesn't really bother me."

"Wish I could share your sentiment." Shinji analyzes his every word. Too bitchy? Too sarcastic? Not bitchy and sarcastic enough? Popsicle boy laughs just a little bit, and it still wakes up the hairs on the back of Shinji's neck.

"I can see that." He observes. Shinji wonders what he's alluding to for a second, before the cold chill sweeping across his naked shoulders slaps the common sense back into him. The dryer hasn't buzzed yet, but screw it. He pulls his shirt from the still spinning contraption, and waves it out a little bit in hopes of shaking away some of the warm, tacky wetness that's still clinging to it. He gives up, and pulls it over his head.

"Yeah, well." Shinji says. For a long few seconds that's all he says. Conversations kind of happen in two parts. The ball is still in shinji's court, and "yeah, well. " is pretty much social code for fuck off. "I catch colds easily."

While the myth about catching sickness from cold temperatures can be disproved by listening to your 8th year science teacher, or literally searching a few words on google, it's certainly better than saying nothing at all. Kaworu, who is sitting on top of the freezer now, gives his two cents.

"Well, that'd be rough right about now. With finals coming up, and whatnot."

Which raises another question; does he even go here? The semester is almost up for every school, so finals are common knowledge. If he's been floating around NERV, why is this the first he's seen of him? Why is he here? What does he have to do with a mostly tight knit group of crime majors and horny band kids? And he almost asks.

There is an accusation on the tip of his tongue, a lifetime of questions begging to slip out and be answered, but then Kaworu is leaving. Not impolitely, of course. He gives some sort of average goodbye, finally retrieves the ice, and as he ascends the rickety staircase Shinji is so sure this will be the last time they speak. Normally he would say nothing. Normally he'd let this all go and black out and let Misato yell at him for it tomorrow. Normally. But he is not himself tonight

"Do you wanna' hang out?" He asks.

Kaworu nods. He says sure. They leave the basement, they return the ice to the girl who plays first chair in the university's orchestra, but feels no qualms in getting sloshed on the weekends. They sit on the outskirts of the noise. They talk. Shinji learns.

His name is Kaworu Nagisa. He knows music, and music knows him. He doesn't drink. He doesn't talk about himself much. He is 5'11, near sighted, and interested in everything . He doesn't drink. He listens well.

His name is Kaworu Nagisa and Shinji does not think that Asuka should do him.

Oh no. In fact, he thinks she should do the opposite. That could be several different approaches, of course. Friendly conversation. A polite shake of the hand, which is neither too warm nor suspiciously lingering. Staying away from him at all costs. He likes that one best. Either or all of these would work nicely, he thinks. No harm done. This is for her, he thinks. The best for her. He doesn't exactly want to say he's too good for her. Walking downstairs with someone, however regal it may have been, doesn't really set up that much of a friendship. But it sets up something that he doesn't see a lot of, and that's a potential friendship. Asuka has a thing for royally fucking those over.

Friendship. Maybe that's what he's been sniffing out in this stranger all night. Even if that hardly feels complicated enough. Even if he keeps sneaking glances over his shoulder to see whether Kaworu looks any different in this lighting. It's around one in the morning. This marks the longest time they've been together without getting lost. Shinji doesn't even know why that matters. Why he keeps thinking about it.

"I don't usually drink." Shinji changes the subject in his head, as if it was effecting things in the real world.

Kaworu doesn't point out the shallow glass of something brown and diluted that Shinji is clutching white-knuckled. Shinji suspects that maybe he's too nice to go around calling people liars.

"I wouldn't call you out if you did." Kaworu shrugs a little bit, letting his back rest coolly on the wall behind them. While he's busy people watching Shinji kills the rest of whatever the hell this is (shochu and coffee? piss?), and shoves it away to pretend like he never even had it in the first place. Crutch? What crutch?

"This is a drinking party, anyway." He continues. "Didn't come here to scold people and lose myself in prayer."

"...What did you come here to do?" Not two seconds pass before he commences backpedaling. "Sorry, that sounded rude, I just meant…"

He waits for an interruption that Kaworu won't give. It's strange. Someone letting him talk. Someone patient enough to wait around for his mind to work. Not batting an eyelash, or tapping his foot to the tune of boredom. He is, so it seems, generally interested. It gives Shinji chills.

"It's just that I haven't seen you around here before." He stops and allows himself a second to think. "...And it kind of sucks around here. I don't know why anybody without a personal connection would come here for fun . Especially if you aren't drinking."

Beyond them, someone breaks a glass. Someone tunes a guitar, a cocktail shaker rattles, ugly laughter, someone's french electro-pop album that they swear is in right now, sneeze, burp, clap, the constant buzzing of an old refrigerator. These are the sounds that your mother warned you about. And then Kaworu's voice again. A special guest track.

"You don't seem like you think it sucks here." He suckles at the stained end of a wooden Popsicle stick. "I guess the fifth shot kind of does that, huh? I think you lost, by the way."

Shinji hadn't even thought about that. Without Asuka to drive his liver to suicide, winning that stupid drinking game wasn't even a B list priority. She was busy dreaming of the slowest, and bloodiest way to murder him, and he was busy chasing the boy she'd been chasing earlier. He was kind of busy. So sue him. Of course, though the drinking game themed chapter of the night was far over, that didn't mean it couldn't still exist to haunt him. Kaworu had seen it, apparently. Sweet.

"Oh my god." He closes his long pause, slinking down into a puddle of self-loathing goo. Head in hands. Brain somewhere beyond it. "I don't even wanna' know whether or not you saw the whole thing."

"Oh-ho, I did." He says. "Flawless technique, for someone who doesn't usually drink. Must be a fast learner."

Though his web of lies was relatively small this time around, it was still sticky as hell, and his face definitely wasn't this red before. Still, Kaworu looks like he could care less. He's looking at Shinji like there's something there to look at, habitually biting at the chewed end of his popsicle stick. His shirt is still wet enough to stick to his collar bones, and he's enjoying the company of a liar. Shinji would be interested in knowing what doesbother this guy.

"If you haven't learned already, I'm a heavy drinker and a habitual liar."

When Kaworu laughs this time, it's big. Not huge, but big. Real, and healthy, and the least forced thing about this entire night. When it slows, Shinji wishes it hadn't. Making people laugh is something, but making Kaworu laugh can only be described as something else. He isn't worried that he's laughing at him anymore. He isn't, for the time being, worried about anything. Odd.

"Shinji." He says, and Shinji's blood goes cold in the best of ways. "You don't have to feel bad about letting loose. You're a person. That's the cool thing about people, they're allowed to make mistakes in the name of evolution. Mistakes are what make people work. Keep making them. For science."

Shinji looks at Kaworu, and thinks that under the right circumstances, there is a good chance that talk like that could have made him cry. He watches. And watches, and watches, and waits, and waits, and comes to the conclusion that this is real life and he is very, very lucky tonight.

"You are so weird." Shinji says.

Half of a smirk curls onto Kaworu's face.

" So weird." Shinji continues, coming back to earth when Kaworu takes his right hand and holds it with both of his own. When his heart starts to beat, he wonders if it's ever actually worked before right now.

"Shinji." He says again, his name fitting into Kaworu's mouth just as perfectly the second time around. "We're hanging out. That means that I'm responsible for at least half of you. And if you don't have a good time tonight, then I'll have done a terrible job."

"...Okay." Shinji manages to say from his new catatonia.

"Do you wanna' have a good time tonight?"

"Okay."

"And do you wanna' go win that game and kick about six different asses?"

"Okay."

"Do you, Shinji Ikari, want to make a healthy dose of bad decisions tonight?"

"Okay."

Kaworu releases his hand, but not him. After all, he is responsible for half of him tonight. When they get up, everything is terrible. The lights here are ugly, and pretty, and the smell of rain and sweat is threaded throughout every last square foot of this horrible world. Everything is alive. Everything awful is instantly beautiful.

"Then count me in." Kaworu says. "I'm glad to have met you, Shinji Ikari."


End file.
